They’ll also get plenty of support from lifelong Labour Party supporters who are aghast at the direction the party has taken, its casual relationship to being a party of opposition and a government in waiting, and its preference to build from the ruins of Brexit a socialist vision of Britain (sorry, England and Wales) that neither enjoys the support of anything approaching a majority of the country, nor cares that this policy will drastically worsen the situation of those very people that they profess to support.
But yeah, State Aid
Leaving aside our differences on what the PLP should and should not be, the two main parties are split down the middle over Brexit, and neither of them offer anything like the possibiilty of actually governing in the coming decade, which will be singularly defined by Brexit and its consequences.
Labour and the Tories will split, it’s just a question of in which direction, IMHO
I only have a modest appreciation of Danish politics from watching Borgen! How do you find having multiple smaller parties forming coalitions actually works there? Perhaps something similar here would be a refreshing change.
Mate, you’re feel free to show me polls where you think Labour are going to win a snap election. They must exist if the Cons are wigging out on WhatsApp.
Coalition government is the norm here, as you know from t’telly.
However, that’s not really the issue when comparing to the UK: with the exception of immigration debate, the political debate here is much less shouty and much more nuanced
As an example, a typical tool of government here is a forlig - a pact - between parliamentary parties on issues which are characterised by widespread support, or need. This, essentially, locks in reforms from being buggered with every four years or so when there’s a new government.
But it requires grown up debate by grown up politicans, rather than tweeting silly shit about the Marshall Plan or made up shit Article 24 of GATT. So it’s fair to say it would take a sea change in parliamentarians and, frankly, a change in our society to get to that stage, so it’s not really relevant.
Besides which, there is not in Denmark, nor in any other EU country I can think of, one single issue that characterises everything to the extent that Brexit does in the UK, and will do for some time.
It’s not that I think coaltion government is the perfect solution (and certainly not without elecotral reform) but simply that the current political landscape is wholly unsuited to representing the views of voters.
But, on a nit-picking point, The Independent’s standards of language leave a lot to be desired. I guess they don’t employ sub-editors any more.
The headline says “Institute of Economic Affairs issued formal warning …”. The default in English is that the word order is subject-verb-object. So that would be the IEA (subject) issuing (verb) a formal warning (object). In fact the IEA was issued with a formal warning … which is pretty much the opposite of the impression that the headline creates.
In the article they go on to say
The IEA, which is registered as an educational charity, removed the report from its website after receiving a draft warning from the commission but said it was ”disappointed” with the report, which it claimed had “extremely widespread and worrying implications”.
Let’s ignore the fact that they’re all over the place (sometimes right, sometimes wrong) with the use of opening and closing quotation marks. I really don’t think they were disappointed with the report. They were the ones who wrote the report. They were disappointed with the verdict. It’s the verdict which has implications.
Further down they say
The commission said the event ”provided a platform” for Brexiteers to campaign against the government’s EU withdrawal proposals. This “clearly constitutes political activity” and was not “an inappropriate use of charitable resources”, it added.
Multiple negatives can be useful. But if you’re going to use them then you do need to be able to count. I’m pretty sure that what the IEA did was “an inappropriate use of charitable resources”. If it was not then they would not have got into trouble.
A spokesman from the right wing thinktank the IEA was directly followed by a spokesman from the right wing thinktank the Adam Smith institute this morning on Radio 4’s Today show. There was no attempt at providing any sort of balance.
Both of these bodies are espousing 0% import tariffs, which will result in severe damage to domestic industry & agriculture but will allow for the import of cut priced goods produced under dubious, unregulated conditions.
Yesterday the BBC had a spokesperson on from the new brownshirts youth movement Turning Point. (as if they actually have a following here)
I simply can’t imagine why these types keep getting such generous opportunities to promote their views without contradiction.
So in the course of the last few hours we’ve had John McD slapping down an LBC caller who suggested that the cries of anti–semitism against Labour were smeers, and now Emily Thornberry at the IoG saying Jez was wrong to oppose Robin Cook / Labour policy on Kosovo intervention
What do they know that we don’t ? Anyone would think there is an imminent leadership contest in Labour
Anyone would think the Tories have the BBC over a barrel since their funding “debate” and insisted on a load of Tories getting jobs. Question Time Producer being another that springs to mind.
